Marketing warfare strategies are a type of strategies, used in business and marketing, that try to draw parallels between business and warfare, and then apply the principles of military strategy to business situations, with competing firms considered as analogous to sides in a military conflict, and market share considered as analogous to the territory which is being fought over. It is argued that, in mature, low-growth markets, and when real GDP growth is negative or low, business operates as a zero-sum game. One person’s gain is possible only at another person’s expense. Success depends on battling competitors for market share.
Innovation
2- Leadership and Innovation: Relating to Circumstances and Change
Relationship to Circumstance and Change
I distinguish six different ways we can relate to our circumstance and the changes occurring all the time. I claim that the way we relate to our circumstances becomes the foundation for our being leaders and opens or closes possibilities and opportunities for innovating. If we consider that change is a constant and always occurring whether we know it or not, then we might also say that these six ways of relating to the circumstances are also ways we relate to the world and become the contexts within which we deal with everyday life. These should not be considered as progressive steps in a process. Rather, these are different “states of being” or contexts available to every human being, at every moment, to differing degrees depending upon our commitments, concerns and
competence in various domains of action.
RESISTANCE – Opposition to circumstance
Probably the most common way we relate to change is to resist it. To resist means to stand apart from whatever one is resisting and judge it as ‘not being as it should be’.
We resist in many ways: we can resist by simply disagreeing with a new policy, for instance, by analyzing something over and over again, or by playing devil’s advocate with no ownership of the issue. Resistance can be overt or covert, sometimes we can resist by agreeing with someone and then gossiping when the person isn’t around. We can procrastinate, argue, rationalize or even sabotage a change initiative simply by ignoring it and waiting for the next change to come along.
Whatever strategies or patterns for resistance we have, whether overt or covert, conscious or unconscious, active or passive, they have three things in common: First, all forms of resistance are “counter-innovative” and thwart human intentionality to create/own
change.Any effort spent in opposing what is occurring moment to moment will blind us to possibility. Further, resistance gives power to the status quo or cultural inertia that, by its nature, will persist. This is reflected in the often quoted maxim, ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’.
Secondly, all resistance is rooted in the past and is grounded in a negative mood/attitude and assessment of ‘the way it is’, a judgment that things ‘should be’ different than they are. Our commitments and actions are organized by what we see as feasible and that we know how to do. At best, this will lead to finding effective ways to cope and at worst will lead to a state of chronic suffering and eventually to resignation.
Thirdly, to resist implies that there is some thing “there” to resist which essentially objectifies our world including ourselves and other people, turning us into objects in an objective world. This reduces us to either being victims of whatever it is we are resisting and/or encourages a ‘spectator’ relationship with the circumstances. This means we no longer participate in creating the future, and become trapped in a worldview that destroys possibility and power. In this state, innovation is a rarity and an ideal. When innovation
does happen it is usually attributed to some ‘special-ness’ of the innovator or more often explained as an anomaly that leaves us unaffected, untouched and not responsible for the change.
“Leadership” in this context is exercised through ‘opposition’ to the circumstance. For
the most part, this will prove ineffective to the point of becoming part of the problem. For example, in most organizational or cultural change initiatives, the prevailing rational is that the status quo is “broken” and needs to be fixed. The leadership is resisting the ‘way
it is’ and in a well-meaning way is attempting to ‘fix it’. The problem is that these initiatives are rarely effective because everything being done to change something is pushing against (resisting) what is already going on. This is how many issues persist even when there is widespread agreement that something should change. Essentially the proponents and opponents to a leadership initiative are operating in the same context.
COPING – Positive reaction to circumstances
Coping is also rooted in a view that circumstances are objective and we must somehow adjust our commitments and actions to match what the circumstances allow. Coping might be viewed as a positive alternative to resistance as the coping person works within the circumstances effectively. Energy expended in resisting is now redirected to
problem-solving and designing ways to overcome barriers to accomplishing one’s intention. Like resistance, coping is also ‘counter-innovative’ as a relationship to change, but with one big difference: There are many innovations that are conceived as tools or strategies for more effective coping. In other words, in a circumstantially determined view of reality, coping can drive innovation, but only as a RE-ACTION to the circumstances, not as an intentional force in creating new circumstances.
For example, “organized labor” was invented as a re-action to perceived misuse and abuse of power by owners and managers in the early part of the 20thcentury and has become an integral aspect of how work is accomplished. In other words, the political- economic ‘institution’ of organized labor was a way for workers to cope with their circumstances. While we can observe that this ‘innovation’ has produced a lot of value and benefit for workers over the years, it can also be argued that it has done little to build or address the underlying issues of trust and allocation of perceived power in organizational hierarchies. In effect, the mechanism for coping reinforced and even institutionalized the problem. Further, we can argue that successful coping solutions will often thwart and even undermine attempts at further innovations. In the above example, labor organizations have generally attempted to block various proposed innovations in management such as cross-functional training, incentive compensation packages, self- managing teams and commitment-based management.
Leadership in this context is often facilitative and oriented toward reasonable
expectations and interpretations of what is possible and not possible. In a coping context, leaders will typically be arguing for and justifying whatever limitation seem to exist and encouraging ‘work around’ or ‘in spite of’ strategies for getting things done. While this
can be positive and produce results, the leader in this case become a well meaning and unwitting ‘co-conspirator’ for individual and organizational limitations.
1- Leadership and Innovation: Relating to Circumstances and Change
Innovation is one of those words that we all use, agree is a positive thing and for the most part want more of. However, the term “innovation” like “leadership” seems to defy a commonly accepted definition. There is no shared interpretation of what we mean or what we are observing when we use the terms. Moreover, we lack practices for deliberately and consistently producing “leadership” and “innovation”. This is evident in the fact that in spite of thousands of books on these subjects, reading and understanding the books doesn’t enable us to be leaders or innovators.
Innovation and leadership are closely related. Leadership always has some focus on bringing about a better future. In this sense, leaders are necessarily innovators. We would not normally consider a spectator of the status quo to be a leader. The term innovation also suggests some break with the ‘norm’ or the status quo. I will show in this text that an ‘innovator’ and a ‘leader’ are cut from the same cloth, that these terms are distinguishing different but intersecting dimensions of the same phenomenon.
This paper is the first of a series of essays that are intended to open possibilities for developing leadership. It provides pathways for action for those who are dissatisfied with the status quo and are attempting to either improve on existing processes or perhaps accomplish breakthrough results.
To begin, I will make a number of distinctions. There are obvious distinctions between the innovator (who), an innovation (what) and the process of innovating (how). This paper’s intent is to illuminate and inquire into the phenomenon of innovation (and leadership) before history judges an accomplishment as innovative or declares a person to be a leader. The focus will be on the innovator and the context or ‘way of being’ of the innovator. My thesis is that a competency for innovation is a natural by-product of certain ways of relating to the world; the context in which we relate to circumstances and change. I will also distinguish between innovation and art, two terms often used interchangeably. Finally, I distinguish simple change that is a variation of what already exists from profound change that alters the scope of what is possible.
Distinguishing Innovation
To many, innovation is equated with change. But, this view tells only one part of the story. Change is happening all the time whether we’re aware of it or not. A random event, insight or an accident may be novel but I do not consider it to be an innovation. What one can observe and do in the context of a novel occurrence or insight might very well lead to innovation. For example, all of us have had ‘big ideas’ from time to time and done nothing about them only to learn later that someone has succeeded in bringing about
exactly what we had imagined. This is what might distinguish a leader/innovator from a dreamer.
A more powerful way to think of innovation is that it means: intentionally ‘bringing into existence’ something new that can be sustained and repeated and which has some value or utility. That is, innovation is always related to some practical ‘in-the-world’ value. It is about making new tools, products or processes, bringing forth something ‘new’ which allows human beings to accomplish something they were not able to accomplish previously.
Art is creative and may have value to its consumers, but requires no utility to be art. Art might be seen as the artist’s self-expression or experience of their world. Innovation on the other hand must allow for something else, some possibility or accomplishment or value beyond the innovation itself. If someone comes up with a new hammer that does what our existing hammers do, then that is a design change and design is an ‘art’. When someone creates a new kind of hammer, however, such as a ‘nail gun’ or a new method for hammering, then we can distinguish that as innovation. In this sense, we can also see that we can innovate within an art form, such as painting with acrylic at one point allowed artists to create effects that were not possible with traditional oils.
When we create a new tool we are innovating. When we are not innovating we are the tool or the ‘tool’ is an extension of us. For example, the typewriter was an innovation in writing. At some moment, the typewriter becomes transparent (to both the typist and those concerned with what is being typed) and we simply have a typist typing. The tool appears again only when there is a breakdown or it no longer serves its purpose. I am claiming that our relationship to the circumstances, especially when there are breakdowns, is the primary factor in determining whether we respond as leaders and innovate, or simply resist or cope with what is happening.
Whether we are speaking about leadership or innovation, our concern is about accomplishing some sustainable change whether large or small, continuous or breakthrough. While leaders and innovators participate in both kinds of change, I distinguish leadership as always occurring in a context of some intention to create the latter: Breakthrough, to break with the status quo. Both leaders and innovators change the context, paradigm or frame of reference of the innovator/leader and those who have a stake in the innovation. However, another distinction between leaders and innovators comes from the observation that leaders’ actions exist within a context of ongoing relationships with other human beings.
If change is happening all the time and innovation and leadership both imply deliberate acting, then are there (deliberate) ways of being in the world that define our relationships with change? And, is there an “order” underlying such possible ways of being?
by Jim Selman
strategy and business 